GOP seeks to lessen tea party clout

Senate Republicans are spoiling for a fight this primary season as they try to take back control of the party from conservative activists.

The strategy: prop up the most electable candidates — even if they are more moderate than ones demanded by tea party activists — and punish those who get in their way.

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After witnessing the business community help save the candidacy of Bradley Byrne, an establishment-backed candidate in a GOP runoff Tuesday for a House seat in Alabama, Republican senators are calling for the same type of support from well-funded GOP groups in Senate primaries next year.

“If you have an unlevel playing field, then you get predictable results,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who faces a primary challenge next year, said Wednesday. “The people who want to support a more traditional, Ronald Reagan-like Republican also need to get in the game.”

The fight between the establishment and the tea party has been brewing since 2010, but it has taken on new urgency in the aftermath of the Tuesday elections and as the midterm elections draw near. Many congressional Republicans were quick to argue that the 2013 elections bolster the case they’ve been making for the past three years: Candidates matter.

Gov. Chris Christie romped to reelection in New Jersey by positioning himself as a deal-cutting pragmatic Republican who did not adhere to strict conservative orthodoxy. But to his south, Ken Cuccinelli lost his bid for the Virginia governor’s mansion in part because Democrats seized on his hard-line conservative credentials. And even further south in Alabama, Byrne beat back Dean Young, a staunch conservative who likened himself to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

Republicans said they must replicate the tactics by choosing the best candidates in 2014 — regardless of the demands of tea party-aligned groups.

“If super PACs are going to get involved in primaries, there has to be some other people involved in primaries who are interested in actually winning the election in November — and not just purifying the party in the primary,” said Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who ran the National Republican Senatorial Committee in the past two cycles and faces reelection next year.

With the blessing of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the hardball plan is already beginning to take shape. Senior Republican officials are privately warning GOP consultants and firms who continue to work with one of their main foes — the Senate Conservatives Fund — and another GOP ad firm that they won’t get contracts from the NRSC. They’ll also be frozen out of McConnell’s network if they remain hired by their right-wing rival.

The NRSC is prepared to spend money in primaries after sitting out the intraparty fights in 2012.

The rhetoric has become more pointed, with top Republicans accusing the groups of caring strictly about their own profits rather than the cause of winning a Senate majority. And with the backing of Senate Republicans, Big Business groups — which are allied with McConnell — are taking a more aggressive tack in the 2014 primaries as well.

Some Republicans see the turn of events as eventually hobbling some of the outside groups. Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran, chairman of the NRSC, said the conservative organizations could grow weaker if they lose in 2014 and their fundraising begins to dry up.

“Donors are tired of contributing to groups that support candidates with their money that don’t win elections,” Moran said. “If you can only win a Republican primary and can’t win a general election, you serve no purpose in changing the United States Senate to something that’s good for the country.”

The stakes couldn’t be higher: In addition to the fiercely fought race to keep control of the House, Republicans must net six seats to take back the Senate majority next year. If they don’t, the GOP’s map to the majority grows much bleaker in future election cycles.

“Hopefully it means that the tea party people will start to realize that it’s better to work within the Republican Party than to continually make it very difficult to elect Republicans,” said Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, who thwarted a tea party challenge in his primary last year. “I think the tea party could be a great asset to the Republican Party if they would just get behind solid conservatives who are running.”

Whether the more combative approach works in the primary — or spawns a costly intraparty war that could damage the GOP in next year’s general elections — remains to be seen. For instance, the NRSC and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have severed ties with Jamestown Associates, a consulting firm that helped cut ads supporting McConnell’s primary challenger Matt Bevin.

But it’s uncertain whether the severed ties will have much of an impact: The NRSC hasn’t worked with Jamestown since the 2010 cycle when it paid the group nearly $30,000 before ending its association with the firm following a controversial ad in the West Virginia Senate race.